COLUMN ONE : For Spain, the Shadow of Racism : A prospering economy and an open-door policy are attracting Arabs, Africans and East Europeans. Laws on dealing with outsiders aren’t working.

All summer, as Spaniards watched with incomprehension and distaste, homeless African refugees camped in a landmark plaza watched over by a doleful statue of Don Quixote.

It was a downtown stage starkly set with the paramount symbol of the old insular Spain and harbingers of a new multiracial society. Both are players in a nascent drama abrasive and bewildering to both.

“Madrid is not like the other European capitals. . . . Spain has been closed so long that people don’t know about blacks. They need to get civilized,” said Aaron, a 25-year-old former political science student from Nigeria encountered amid the swirl of refugees, strolling mothers, lounging pensioners and a battalion of plainclothes police in the historic Plaza de Espana.

In an inward-looking Spain, outsiders have been conspicuous mostly by their absence since the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews in 1492. Now, as small but swelling numbers of Arabs, Africans and East Europeans seek out Spain as a place of work and refuge, Spaniards are being forced to confront unfamiliar emotions and self-searching questions: Are we racists? Are we xenophobes?

Charity groups working with newcomers have seen enough of both in recent months to be pressing the government to make acts or expressions of racism and xenophobia a crime.

Nascent racism is only part of the problem. With the arrival of foreigners in substantial numbers, Spain has also stumbled into an embarrassing administrative crisis: Quixotic laws on how to deal with outsiders aren’t working.

Belated Spanish vexation with issues that have long troubled other First World nations is a consequence of both historic isolation and its end. The centuries-old Spanish veil that lifted with the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 was discarded for good with membership in the European Community in 1986. Spain, so lately backward and dictatorial, now sups at the same table with some of the world’s richest democrats.

It was a poor country that exported labor for centuries. Now, amid a heady economic boom, Spain’s position on the western and southern continental frontier makes it a new magnet for job seekers fleeing have-not neighbors.

With the arrival of a border-free Europe at the end of 1992, Arabs, Africans and Latin Americans who find safe harbor in Spain will be able to travel freely within all 12 countries of the community. The flip side is that when the community opens, it also closes: It will be harder for those who are outside to get in.

Spain must therefore align its immigration policies with those of its European partners. That means strain in historic ties with the Maghreb countries of North Africa and with Latin America. Starting Jan. 1, Spain will require visas for visitors from the Maghreb for the first time.

And at the end of 1992, Spain will also be forced to demand visas of Latin Americans for the first time. That hurts.

“Our worst enemy couldn’t have timed it better,” sighed one Foreign Ministry official. Spain’s celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ discoveries will include a Madrid summit of Latin American presidents summoned by King Juan Carlos I. But then come visa requirements for the Latin Americans, who have been free to visit the cultural Mother Country since 1492. In a rear-guard action, Spain is fighting within the European Community to limit the number of Latin countries from which visas will be required.

Spain’s attraction to foreigners increased steadily with the prosperity of the 1980s. At present, about 400,000 foreigners live legally among the 40 million Spaniards, twice the number of a decade ago. About two-thirds of them are citizens of European Community countries.

More troubling are the foreigners who have come illegally, and those, particularly Africans and East Europeans, who have been arriving in growing numbers this year to ask for political refuge. The government says it believes there are 100,000 to 150,000 foreigners in the country illegally; private relief agencies say there may be twice that many.

“The absolute numbers of foreigners are small, but they have grown big enough to generate a phenomena of rejection,” said Ramon de Marcos, a sociologist who works for a church refugee welfare group.

At least half of the foreigners are Moroccans who work mostly in agriculture in the south and in farms and factories around Barcelona. More visible, and more annoying to many Spaniards, are the small but growing pockets of Africans in Madrid and Barcelona.

An award-winning new Spanish film, “Letters from Alou,” opens with a small boat from North Africa landing by night on the Spanish coast and tracks the odyssey of the young Senegalese who is one of its passengers. By De Marcos’ count, several dozen Africans have drowned crossing the tantalizingly narrow but treacherous Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain.

The foreign thirst for Spain is an abrupt and unsettling about-face for a nation that, in leaner days not long gone, exported workers around the world. It is particularly disconcerting for Spaniards whose only acquaintance with black or Arabic-speaking strangers is apt to be from television.

Last year, about 4,000 new arrivals asked to remain in Spain under laws allowing for political asylum or refugee status. Through September, the 1990 total was 12,000, and on busy days there are sometimes more than 100 requests. About 60% of the most recent arrivals are Poles taking shameless advantage of Spanish good intentions.

In some African countries, particularly Nigeria, and in some Eastern European countries, especially Poland, it is becoming an open secret that Spain is a soft touch: Claim political persecution, the word goes, and get a paid vacation.

Under liberal Spanish law, anyone who asks for refuge is entitled to remain in Spain while his case is being considered. The refugee is entitled to aid of around $300 a month in the meantime, and although he is not legally allowed to work, there are usually black market jobs for those willing to get dirty and work cheap.

“The word has gotten around that we let people in, give them money and leave them alone for a year or more. This is El Dorado for those whose flight is not so much political as from hunger,” said Alvaro Gil Robles, Spain’s national ombudsman.

Concerned Spanish officials say it takes the French government, which fields around 60,000 requests each year, between one and six weeks to decide whether to grant political refugee status and the right to remain in the country. It takes the Spanish bureaucracy 18 months, or even two years, to make the same determination, even in cases, like those of the still-arriving Poles, where there is no evidence to support a claim of political persecution.

“We are new in this business, and we don’t have a legal way of deflecting asylum-seekers who are coming for economic reasons, even when their cases are groundless,” said Javier Pujol, a newly appointed executive at the Interior (Police) Ministry seeking ways make the system work faster and smoother.

Ombudsman Gil Robles calls for stricter border control to stop those trying to sneak in; more efficient ways of legalizing foreigners, particularly Moroccans, who have lived long and productively in Spain; speedier consideration of those who arrive claiming political persecution, and unflinching shelter for those who legitimately need it.

Some Africans now arrive with their applications for asylum already filled out, Spanish officials say. Some who come alleging political persecution know so little about politics that they are unable even to name the president of the government they claim was oppressing them. Others destroy their documents, leaving Spanish officials no idea whence they came, and hence, to what country they might be deported. One such North African was deported at Spanish expense to three different countries that he variously claimed to come from, but was rejected by all three. Now he’s in Spain to stay.

Under the law, only after an appeal for asylum or refuge has been declared without foundation can a petitioner be deported--if he can be found by then.

Some who take unfair advantage of Spanish hospitality, including as many as 5,000 Poles in Madrid alone, are not easily detected. But Africans stand out. They claim that public hostility and low-level discrimination is unremitting.

“You ask for construction work and the people say ‘No way. There are rules, there are unions, and you are black,’ ” said a 26-year-old would-be journalist from Chad named Basile, idling one recent morning in the Plaza de Espana. “People who do offer jobs expect you to work for nothing. You see people here, and one day they are gone--slipped away to try for other countries.”

The ombudsman’s office has intervened repeatedly against police abuse of Arabs and Africans, including indiscriminate detention and extra-judicial deportations. Not long ago, the ombudsman stopped the illegal deportation of a former Iranian military officer back to Iran when he was literally on the steps to the plane.

“Our interest is in seeing that the law is applied with all its guarantees,” said Gil Robles. “People have rights. They must be respected.”

De Marcos, whose group helps legitimate political refugees find third countries to accept them, complains of what he calls “administrative racism,” and adds: “The administrative infrastructure lacks the capacity to administer the law. There’s a panic reaction it can’t control. Things are getting better, but we’ve had cases of people handcuffed and carried off by night as though they were terrorists.”

Like most Spaniards, officials bridle at allegations of racism that have been aired in the Spanish press.

“Public opinion is not what the headlines say. The risk of racism is for the future. If we have massive immigration and an increase in unemployment, then, yes, we would have problems,” said Pujol at the Interior Ministry. “It is the sight of Africans in the Plaza de Espana that causes racism. Thousands of people see them every day, and they all want to know: ‘What is the government doing?’ ”

About 200 Africans, but usually not more than about 80 at the same time, began moving into the plaza last spring. Most are from southern and western Africa, Nigerians being the largest group among them. They have charity money while waiting for their petitions to be heard, but they legally cannot work, and they say they cannot find a place to live.

“During a real estate boom, nobody wants to rent to people who are probably not staying long, particularly if they are black,” explained De Marcos.

Three ill-conceived government attempts to find housing for the plaza Africans collapsed in the face of rebellion by residents of areas where they were to have been settled. One scheme, choosing a tiny, out-of-the-way village north of Madrid, would have settled more Africans there than there are villagers, many of whom have never seen a black man.

With the turning weather, the African pioneers of a new and more socially complex Spain are moving underground, from the green benches in old Don Quixote’s shadow to the warmth of the plaza’s modern subway station.